Checking out the latest films and giving you my uneducated opinion

Ryan Gosling

Officer K (Ryan Gosling) is a Blade Runner, “retiring” replicants that stop following orders from humans. After dispatching a replicant named Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista) at the protein farm where he worked and lived, Officer K finds a chest buried at the base of a long dead tree. What is discovered inside begins an investigation that could lead to war unless a secret that’s been buried over 30 years can be kept. Officer K’s investigation leads to him finding retired Blade Runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) holed up in an abandoned hotel in deserted Las Vegas. The owner of the company that makes replicants, Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), wants to find out where the contents of the chest leads and sends his personal assistant and assassin Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) to keep an eye on Officer K and kill anyone that gets in her way.

The plot synopsis of “Blade Runner 2049” is intentionally vague since there is spoiler material practically from the first scene. If staying uninformed about the 35-years-in-the-making sequel to “Blade Runner” is important to you then you should avoid pretty much everything on the internet with the possible exception of a trio of short films that fill in some of the backstory referenced in the film. My personal favorite is “2022,” an anime that is about the blackout that was a major event in this universe. It’s weird when a movie has a bunch of prequel material that’s nearly required viewing so the audience is up to speed. To be a truly entertaining film “Blade Runner 2049” could have used a feature-length prequel film so what happens actually causes some emotion and caring. As it is, this film is pretty to look at and has interesting things happen but I can’t say I care.

“Blade Runner 2049” is a master class in production design. Much like the original film, the look of the near future is as much a character as any actor. The flying cars, the massive holographic advertisements, the crowded apartment buildings and urban sprawl that suggests privacy is something that will die a quick death all make the world of “Blade Runner 2049” feel as real as any created landscape can. The world is probably even more grim than in the original thanks to a nearly constant rain and dark skies in most outdoor settings. We also see an abandoned Las Vegas that has a constantly hazy yellow/orange sky. We don’t know why the city is abandoned but clearly something very bad happened. Holographic representations of Elvis, Sinatra and showgirls are put to good use to make the empty showroom seem even more depressing. So much has gone into the look of the future that it seems the human element has been largely ignored.

There is an emotional pall over the film. Human and replicant life doesn’t count for much in the Los Angeles of 2049. Prostitutes work their trade in store fronts with smoked glass so you can see the girls with clients if they are right up against it. Food vendors are all over and there are kiosks with people selling trinkets of all types. Pets are still artificial and only available to the very wealthy. It is a world where people try to keep their heads down and avoid trouble. Since Ryan Gosling’s Officer K’s job is to charge into trouble he’s hated by pretty much everyone he contacts including his fellow officers. Gosling plays K almost as an automaton with very little emotional range. There’s a good reason for that but I won’t spoil it for you. Since he’s the lead character and practically in every frame of the film his cold and sullen demeanor rubs off on the audience. He’s so emotionally detached it has the effect of making everything in the film feel unimportant. Despite what we’re told about how this case could lead to or stop a war, there’s very little in what happens that creates much in the way of excitement or emotion.

Part of what adds to that lack of caring is a lack of knowledge. I saw all three prequel short films so I probably entered the movie with more information about the world of “Blade Runner 2049” than most; however, it wasn’t enough. For all the proclamations about how the events we watch are world-changing, none of it struck me as being that important. That, I believe, comes from a lack of understanding just what the use of replicants means to the world in the near future. There’s some brief talk about how using them provides the workforce necessary to take care of the basic needs of humanity and grow enough food for an ever expanding population but the film doesn’t help me grasp just how these events could bring about the end of civilization or humanity or whatever. The original “Blade Runner” suffered from a similar lack of importance in my understanding of what made events so reality-altering.

This lack of an emotional hook isn’t helped by a running time of over 150 minutes. There are numerous scenes that are stretched out for what feels like an interminable amount of time. Gosling’s Officer K walks so slowly it’s a surprise when he actually gets somewhere. There are long and loving shots of cityscapes and cars flying between massive skyscrapers and none of them do anything to move the story along. I could have done with fewer and shorter shots of the Los Angeles of the future and more explanation of why I should care.

“Blade Runner 2049” is rated R for nudity, language, some sexuality and violence. There are some fights and some shootings. Some of these are bloody but the violence is scattered throughout the film. We see a few naked women at various times. There are also statues that show a woman’s breasts. We see the beginning of an unconventional three way sexual encounter but there is no nudity of sexual activity shown. The outside of a brothel is shown and we can see the sex workers engaged in activity inside through smoked windows. We see what appear to be monochrome models of replicants that show their sex organs but this is brief. Foul language is scattered.

I’ve said this with other movies but perhaps I’m just not smart enough to fully understand and appreciate the story of “Blade Runner 2049.” I wanted to love the film as it has mostly glowing reviews; but I must admit, I don’t love the original film. It has many of what I perceive as the same problems of being about something in which I’m not emotionally invested. I don’t know how the events of either film are something that can be important to the characters, much less to me. I don’t hate the film. It is visually stunning and is interesting to watch but I just can’t invest myself in the story. Maybe it’s just me but “Blade Runner 2049” is lost on me.

“Blade Runner 2049” gets three stars out of five.

This week there’s an action film, horror movie and a couple of “based on a true story” pictures to choose from. I’ll see and review at least one of the following:

The Foreigner—

Happy Death Day—

Marshall—

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women—

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Seeing the impending collapse of the housing market, hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale) creates a fund that bets against the massive mortgage funds sold by the biggest banks called a credit default swap market. Believing they will rack up huge fees and never have to pay off his investment, many major banks agree to the fund. Meanwhile, investor Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) hears about Burry’s fund and begins finding his own investors for the credit swap market. A chance wrong number phone call catches the interest of stock trader Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and he invests millions with Vennett. Two young investors, Jamie Shipley and Charlie Geller (John Magaro and Finn Wittrock), see a prospectus for Vennett’s fund and approach friend and retired trader Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) to help them get in on the growing market betting on the failure of mortgage funds. Through greed, manipulation and lax regulation, the American economy and millions of home owners, retirees and small investors were about to lose trillions of dollars while a select few were reaping huge profits from their misfortune.

“The Big Short” is not a film for someone with a short attention span. The labyrinthine collection of funds, abbreviations and acronyms for various packaged mortgage debt is dizzying but essential to having a grasp on what’s going on in the film and why it led to the meltdown of the world economy. Director/co-writer Adam McKay (best known for his work with Will Ferrell) and writer Charles Randolph have done their best to explain what happened in the simplest terms and using Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain and Selena Gomez as themselves explaining the more complicated concepts directly to the camera in ways the audience can understand. It is a brilliant way to take a hugely complex issue and turn it into somewhat understandable nuggets with humor and a fair amount of rage.

The main cast is broken up into three segments with Bale’s Burry starting things off by figuring out the mortgage market was a house of cards with a time bomb ticking away at its base. Gosling and Carell get involved once the debt market is opened. Magaro, Wittrock and Pitt bring up the rear. While the three groups never interact, they are all dancing in the same financial ballet. The entire cast is pretty brilliant with Gosling and Bale delivering standout performances. Gosling is a slimy Wall Street investor with a slick pitch, spray tan and an utter disdain for his assistants. He berates them when they say anything during his sales pitch. He’s the boss from Hell that still manages to inspire loyalty. Bale has probably the most difficult role as he plays Michael Burry as if he was on the autism spectrum. In the film, Burry displays obsessive behavior, often staying up for days at a time, working in his office with loud heavy metal music playing through speakers or in his earbuds. His ability to focus on the intricacies of subprime mortgages and wade through mountains of reports allows him to see what others cannot. Bale makes subtle decisions with the character that keep Burry from turning into some kind of “Rain Man” caricature. While Burry clearly is wired differently from most others he doesn’t come off as someone who is completely out of place.

If there is any part of “The Big Short” that struck me wrong it was Steve Carell’s Mark Baum. Due to a personal tragedy, Baum is a constant ball of anger and frustration who can’t keep his opinion to himself. He has an investment firm with three other people and works directly with one of the major banks. It seems unlikely he could keep any of these business arrangements considering how quickly he flies off the handle. Carell does the best he can with the part and despite my finding his character grating, Baum is still one of the more sympathetic figures in the movie as his frustration at the impending collapse is based on his revulsion at how the system is so thoroughly corrupt; however, that doesn’t stop him from profiting from the suffering of others. Carell is also wearing an odd wig that looks like it doesn’t quite fit. I found his hair to be a distraction.

“The Big Short” is rated R for pervasive language and some sexuality/nudity. There are two scenes involving strippers. Foul language is common throughout the film.

Much like a liquid medicine that has a flavor added so your first impression is pleasant then once you swallow the bitterness causes you to shiver, “The Big Short” wraps its message of utter contempt for the banking industry and those who oversee it in a humorous package. There are some decent laugh-out-loud moments in the film. Once you reach the end, that shiver begins to run down your back as you realize the sins of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s are probably being committed again as you read this. There’s a saying about learning from history otherwise we are doomed to repeat it, making “The Big Short” required viewing for anyone with a mortgage.

“The Big Short” gets four stars out of five.

The Hateful Eight

Eight people are waiting out a blizzard at a store/way station called Minnie’s Haberdashery in the mountains of Wyoming in the late 1800’s. John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) is a bounty hunter who has Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) manacled to his wrist. She is on her way to Red Rock to be hanged. Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) is also a bounty hunter with three dead outlaws strapped to the top of a stagecoach he was sharing with Ruth and Domergue. Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins) was picked up walking through the snow by that same stage coach. He claims his horse broke its leg as he was riding to Red Rock to be sworn in as sheriff but both Ruth and Warren have their doubts about his story due to his family history. Arriving at the store to wait out the storm, they find Oswoldo Mobray (Tim Roth) who identifies himself as the hangman for the territory, Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a cowboy on his way to visit his mother for the holidays, General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern), a Confederate general who is on his way to visit his son’s grave, and Bob (Demian Bichir), the Mexican handyman who is watching the store for the Minnie and her husband Sweet Dave while they go visit family on the other side of the mountain. Ruth is not the trusting type and suspects one or more of the people at the store are working with Daisy to kill him and set her free. Despite his reservations, Ruth enters an agreement with Warren working together to make sure Daisy meets her maker at the end of a rope.

I saw the much hyped 70mm version of Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight.” The things you won’t get in the regular version that will play in most theatres is an overture before the film, some alternate versions of some scenes due to the way they will look on smaller screens and an intermission. What you may miss most is the intermission as even the shorter cut is still two hours and 47 minutes. “The Hateful Eight” is filled with beautiful scenery, long tracking shots of characters crossing the one large room in which most of the action takes place and buckets of blood with chunks of flesh added for realism. It is an orgy of set and costume design as well as special effects provided by Greg Nicotero, the man behind the zombies of “The Walking Dead.” And despite all the cursing and racial epithets, the script is something akin to poetry as Tarantino has structured each bit of dialog to be like a verse of a song, providing both information and entertainment. We learn a great deal about most of the characters in “The Hateful Eight” and often times we are taught in a humorous way. And, as with all Tarantino films, there are homages to the westerns of the past that shaped the director’s vision in his youth and, of course, he uses a soundtrack done by Ennio Morricone, the man behind the music for Spaghetti western auteur Sergio Leone. This is probably the most “Quentin Tarantino” movie the director has ever made. Why then was I not that impressed.

Probably the biggest issue was the length. At just over three hours (overture and intermission included), “The Hateful Eight” is a film that takes its sweet time getting moving. Early on we get long views of snow-covered mountains and trees. There is a shot of a statue depicting Christ on the cross that agonizingly slowly pulls out to show us a stagecoach approaching the camera (this includes the opening credits but it still felt leaden). Later, there long dialog scenes that last an eternity. While I praised the script earlier, there are a lot of scenes that are unnecessarily long with Tarantino showing off how he can make his characters say awful things to one another, so much so that after a while it fails to have much impact.

The ending of the film I also found disappointing. After investing one-eighth of a day in watching these characters dance around each other and then endure an orgy of blood and viscera, the movie staggers to a conclusion that fails to deliver any kind of meaningful emotional payoff. It lays there like a fish out of water, the life slowly oozing from it as it gasps for a last breath. Tarantino asks a great deal from his audience in “The Hateful Eight” and he puts on, for the most part, quite a show; however, when he should have put forth his best effort, he seems to have done just barely enough to get to the closing credits. It’s like being on a plane for 18 hours thinking when you land you’ll be on the other side of the world but finding out you’ve just been circling your home airport. You’ve spent an awfully long time traveling but discover it really wasn’t worth the trip.

“The Hateful Eight” is rated R for strong bloody violence, some graphic nudity, language and violent sexual content. It’s a Tarantino film so the bloody violence is a given. I won’t give specifics as not to spoil it for you but there are numerous shootings with various degrees of bloodiness and goriness. Some limbs get separated from bodies at times as well as one head. One character is punched numerous times producing a great deal of blood. There is a scene showing a naked man walking through snow and there is full frontal nudity. A sex act is shown and graphically described. Foul language is common.

Tarantino has been interviewed numerous times in the run-up to the release of “The Hateful Eight” and has described in glowing terms how much better film is than digital photography. In the past, Tarantino has called digital projection “TV in public.” Having seen this film in 70mm widescreen, I would point out to the director I could see the graininess of the film. The print I saw already had nicks and scratches in it during what was only its fifth screening. Using a lens that hasn’t been on a camera since Charlton Heston’s “Ben Hur” was filmed is great for nostalgia but doesn’t really do anything to advance the art of filmmaking.

Tarantino loves old movies so much he bought a theatre in Los Angeles, CA and programs only the films he thinks should be seen and remembered. That’s great if you’re a rich director and need a hobby. As a moviegoer, I want directors to push the envelope and use all the tools science and industry gives them to create images and stories I’ve never seen before. While “The Hateful Eight” is a beautifully shot and impeccably designed movie, it lacks an emotional connection that Tarantino should be a master at creating by now. His desire to show just how good of a moviemaker he is has gotten in the way of connecting his story to his audience. It was nice to look at but I didn’t want to live there.

“The Hateful Eight” gets three stars out of five.

No new movies are opening this week so it will be two weeks when I review my next film and that is the horror movie, “The Forest.”

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